Starting Over
by Scribbler
Summary: Who is Cissnei? Kadaj, Loz and Yazoo don't care about that so much as WHY she disappeared from Shinra's records. Could it be this mysterious Turk went into hiding because she was set to guard something important? Something like ... Jenova's head? Pre-AC.


**Disclaimer****:** Festively not mine.

**A/N****:** Written for Colichemarde as part of the FF Secret Santa Community on LiveJournal.

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_**Starting Over**_

© Scribbler, December 2009.

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'_Vitality shows in not only the ability to persist but the ability to start over.'_ – F. Scott Fitzgerald.

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Cissnei rolled with the blow and came up with fists at the ready. Almost instantly something crashed into her side. She only just raised her arm in time to block a hit that would have knocked her head off. A sickening crack signalled the breaking of her arm instead, which a burst of white-hot pain backed up seconds later. She gritted her teeth and set her feet. First rule of combat: if you lost your feet, you'd lost everything.

Second rule: never present your back to an opponent who'd already gone for your vital organs with the spiked metal monstrosity on his arm. Or was that just common sense?

There were three of them. She'd had time to count, and even listen to the smallest one rant a little before the big one went off the deep end and started whaling on her. She didn't need more time to go through her mental rolodex: she had no idea who they were. As if it wasn't surprising (or was that depressing?) enough someone had found her after all this time, it wasn't even someone she knew.

That had always been the major demon clinging to her back, making her look over her shoulder and stopping her from enjoying her new life. The central principle of the world as she knew it, and one Zack's death hammered home in the worst way possible: you couldn't leave Shinra. Those claws they'd hooked into you never let go. Once you were in, you were in for keeps.

You _thought_ you could leave. That was the worst part. When you were still naïve they let you sign contracts, made you think it was your choice to become part of them, but that was just one of the many lies they'd pedalled. After wading into a tar pit, asking politely wouldn't get you free. The muck would suck you down until you drowned, no matter how you protested, fought, or pleaded. Cissnei had thought Meteor, and the company's subsequent destruction, would be enough to finally free her, but evidently not. Shinra was going to follow her until her dying day.

Which might just be today, unless she could save herself.

_Shit._

A forward rush made her react on instinct. She dropped onto her back on the pavement, air whooshing from her lungs as she went down hard, lifted her right leg, knee bent like a tumbler at the circus, and caught the man with her foot square in his stomach. He was the biggest of the three, but the bigger they are and all that jazz.

It was like kicking iron. A violent shock went up her leg into her hip, but even iron could buckle with enough force, and she hadn't let herself go soft in her retirement. As he began to double over, she caught one of his wrists with her good arm and used his own momentum to pitch him the rest of the way over. As soon as he'd cleared the length of her body she vaulted to her feet and whipped around. She wasn't about to leave her back exposed for even an instant. These guys were fast – preternaturally so.

"Pathetic, Loz," sneered the one with the longest hair. He tossed it back like he was in some commercial for shampoo.

Cissnei was suddenly rocked by the pain of memory as well. For a second there he'd looked like … But no. No way. That wasn't possible.

Was it?

"She's fast for a little thing," pouted the big guy. He had silver hair too. "She's not enhanced," he added in a whine, as if that was supposed to account for why he'd underestimated her and she'd managed to kick his ass.

"That just makes it worse."

"Who the hell _are_ you people?" Cissnei demanded, conscious of the school at her back and the faces peering from the windows.

"Isn't the question," said the last of the three, the shortest and least assuming, and so probably the worst of the lot if experience was any judge. He levelled a look at Cissnei that did more than that hair-flip to catapult her through time. "Who are _you_?"

The back of Cissnei's neck prickled. There was something alien in his gaze. It scraped along her skin and found the deepest part of her brain, where logic gave way to fear. A primal instinct reacted to what she saw in his eyes – _enemy, threat, danger._ She tamped down on the instinct to flee, at the same time wondering why the hell a _teenager_ could inspire such a reaction in her after the life she'd led. Her long career as a Turk should have prepared her for anything, but this … she was unnerved, and she didn't like it.

"M-Miss Uteru?" quavered a voice.

The man who'd sneered reached into a holster. Cissnei cursed, simultaneously pivoting on one foot and launching herself through the doorway. She slammed into the little boy there, just as the bullet whistled over her head. Unlike a regular bullet it went into the back wall of the school entrance and demolished it in a hail of wood and mortar.

Screams sounded, high and childish. Someone started to cry. Several someones.

Anger rose inside Cissnei like a column of fire. Let Shinra come after her; she'd always known it was a possibility. Since her crisis of faith when she discovered Zack's body outside Midgar, she'd known they may try to retrieve her, or at least punish her for deserting. The hope they'd write her off as a casualty of the 'unfortunate' helicopter crash en route back to base was a vain one. She was a competent pilot – not as good as Reno, but unlikely to fly into the ground or the side of a cliff. Tseng was too thorough to accept such a feeble cover story, even without the lack of evidence. Even if she was brought in and he'd try to lessen her punishment from death, Heidegger would love to make an example of another Turk traitor after Veld. She was prepared for that. She'd made her choices and knew all about living with the consequences – and boy, did Shinra go all out on consequences.

She _wasn't_ going to let them destroy any more innocent lives, though.

"Run, Billy," she told the boy she'd knocked down.

"Miss –?"

"Run away," she snapped, totally unlike her usual playful self. She was the fun-loving teacher; the cheeky one who always smiled, even when she was frowning, and never let anything get her down. Now her tone was brusque, the words bitten off and anything but playful. "I'll deal with this."

"But Miss, they hurt you –"

She ignored his words and staggered to her feet. Billy was a good kid; no great shakes at schoolwork, but nice-natured and still young enough to believe adults could keep him safe, the worst punishment was to be grounded, and teachers had always been teachers. It was outside his sphere of understanding that Miss Uteru had once been a trained assassin, and that she wore casual, brightly coloured sweaters despite the principal's disapproval because they were as far from a regulation black suit as you could get.

The teenager with the silver hair had pushed aside the shooter's gun hand. Cissnei half-expected to see displeasure on his face. However, he still wore that creepy smirk, which the other two mirrored. Their postures said he was in charge, which would have been odd if the parallels between him and Sephiroth weren't so noticeable.

Cissnei had been a Turk for a long time. She'd seen Sephiroth as a teenager. This kid, while not an actual double to look at, carried the same sense of power. In Sephiroth's presence you never lost sight of the fact he could snap you like a twig. He could be pouring tea, signing papers in his office, or making polite conversation, and you could be smiling back and nodding, all perfectly civilised, but part of you was still thinking he could shred you into mince without even breaking a sweat. This kid had that same presence about him, but with a veiled sense of violence that Sephiroth had never acted on until his mind broke at the very end. Whoever this kid was, his mind already had a few cracks showing, and the things showing through them made Cissnei's blood run cold.

"So you know who I am," she spat. She'd never liked the taste of blood, especially her own. "Who the hell are you?" Bravado was important around lions, dragons and Turks: if you showed vulnerability, they saw it as a weakness, and weakness got you culled. Some people only understood the politics of power, and she'd bet her bottom gil these three were prime examples of that.

The teenager tilted his head to first one side and then the other, rotating his neck in a lazy motion. "We … are the revolution," he said slowly, sounding out each word as if it pleased him. "We are … the future." He snapped his arm forward, bringing to bear a wicked double-bladed sword. He ran his hand down the metal almost lovingly. "And the past. And definitely the present."

Cissnei would've rolled her eyes if it hadn't involved taking her gaze off him. "Sure," she replied without conviction. "But I was thinking more your names."

"What's in a name?"

"Please don't start talking about roses," she interrupted. The pain from her arm was almost overwhelming. As a Turk she'd learned tricks to keep her mind distracted while injured but forced to stay in the field. All the same, it was hard to keep your hand in with _that_ kind of practise when the worst boo-boo you'd had in years was a paper-cut while grading papers. "You barged into my life and I'd like it if you'd just barge right out again. Failing that, can we hurry up and get the part where I kick your butts? I have a class to teach."

The teenager laughed – actually _laughed_! "I like her," he drawled. "She's feisty."

The one who'd shot at her folded his arms, gun dangling from his hand. Now Cissnei could see it better, she realised it was actually some strange combination of pistol and blade. Nothing as ostentatious as a bayonet, but razor-sharp all the same. She briefly wondered whether her old colleagues could have used it, who among them would have loved to try shooting with it, and then dismissed all those thoughts as irrelevant.

That was the worst part of leaving so abruptly. The Turks weren't quite family, weren't quite friends, but were definitely more than just colleagues. Half the time you couldn't trust them as far as you could sneeze them out of your ear, but Cissnei owed her life to most of them from various occasions, and vice-versa. That built up a bond not easily cast off and forgotten about, even if the thought of staying with Shinra after what the company had done to your only _genuine _friend made you physically ill.

"Kadaj, we're wasting time," said Mr. Blade-Gun.

The teenager rolled his head again, this time waving his free hand as if brushing off the speaker. "Mmm."

"_Kadaj_."

"I do know, Yazoo," he said, faint irritation in his tone, which hardened as he addressed Cissnei once more. "You once worked for Shinra, but you disappeared from their records. We had a heck of a time finding you." He wagged a finger. "You were a bad, bad girl, running off and not letting them know where you'd gone. Or maybe -" That smile again. Cissnei's back arched. She resisted the urge to scratch her hackles. "- that was intentional. Maybe you didn't just go AWOL. Maybe you went into hiding. Or were hiding something."

"What?" She had no idea what he was talking about, but whatever it was, it sounded like only bad news. These guys weren't just after her because she'd jumped ship? The information should have brought relief. Instead, all it brought was more unease. "You mean you're not working for Shinra?"

The guy built like a linebacker scowled. "We would never!" he shouted. Cissnei's students protested detentions in that exact indignant tone.

The little one – Kadaj, Cissnei corrected herself – raised a hand again. "Quiet, Loz. No, we don't work for Shinra. But Shinra does have something of ours, and we want it back."

Cissnei kept her tone even. "Shinra is defunct. Didn't you get the memo?"

"Even the snake with its head cut off can keep living enough to bite you with its poisonous fangs."

Cissnei liked the sound of this less and less. "Shinra stole from a lot of people."

"It also stole a lot of _people_," Kadaj replied cryptically.

Zack flashed into Cissnei's mind. She pushed the thought away.

Kadaj's eyes narrowed, as if he'd read her mind. His stance changed, going from relaxed to combative in the shift of a foot and straightening of an elbow. "You clearly recognise our brother in us."

Brother. That explained it.

A wash of dread and horror went through Cissnei. Sephiroth had been the most powerful warrior to ever exist. When he worked for Shinra he all but won a war singlehanded, and propelled the company into the stratosphere politically and economically. Nobody wanted to argue with the guys who had an invincible living weapon at their command. When he went mad he nearly destroyed the world. Even death on the end of a sword and a dip into the Lifestream wasn't enough to stop him calling Meteor.

Now here were three more forged from the same mould, and already sparks of madness danced in the eyes of at least one. Could the Planet survive three versions of something that nearly annihilated it once before?

But maybe they _weren't_ as powerful as Sephiroth. Certainly, she never could have landed a hit on the Silver General, even when he was a teenager; much less flipped him with one of her own arms busted. That thought alone stopped her giving in to the gibbering, primal fear stirring in her belly at the idea of Sephiroth coming back.

_Zack …_

She didn't think about him often. The memories were too painful and wrapped up in what she mentally referred to as her former existence. No point in dwelling on the past, right? Now, however, he rose like a ghost out of a grave; smiling, strong and exuding the kind of reassuring optimism she'd never known she craved until he was gone.

Being a Turk was equal parts empowering and depressing, but it was all she'd known since she was a kid. Then Zack literally crashed into her world and shifted everything off-kilter. The axis of her belief system changed. Suddenly she started seeing things that had always been familiar in a different light – the colours were different shades, the shadows darker, and the lights brighter. For Cissnei, Zack represented goodness and decency in a world mostly made up of 'grey area'.

Even death wasn't enough to delete encouragement only he could provide her. With the possible exception of Veld, Zack was the only person Cissnei ever felt she could turn to if she needed help. Tseng was so competent she constantly felt the need to prove herself, as if even after years of experience she was still trying to establish her worth as a Turk. Zack had never made her feel that way. He really _was _better than her – could run faster, jump higher, fight longer, and believed more in and of people – but never made her feel like she didn't compare.

That feeling had disappeared when he died. Even in her new life as Miss Uteru she'd never managed to regain it. Inadequacy was like a yappy dog nipping at her heels.

She wished Zack was here now. He was a SOLDIER First Class. He could take out these clowns with one hand tied behind his back. And even if he couldn't _actually_ do it with only one hand, he'd still have given them hell on the level of a super-soldier. What was she when it came down to it? A retired Turk. A damn _good _Turk, retirement notwithstanding, but still just a human who hadn't had a _real_ fight in years.

Was she screwed? Probably.

Was she going to roll over? Not bloody likely.

"Sephiroth was your brother?" she said through gritted teeth, buying herself time.

"Our big brother," Loz said proudly.

"After a fashion." Yazoo didn't sneer this time, but his tone was too deliberate to be pleasant.

Loz pouted. It was bizarre to see a grown man pout. "Family's very important."

"Which brings us neatly back to the point," added Kadaj. He pointed his sword at Cissnei. "Where is our mother?"

Okay, _that_ threw her. "Excuse me?"

"Wrong answer." He nodded to his left and right.

At once, both of his brothers surged forward. They were cobra-swift, deadly, and neither was working with a broken limb.

Cissnei didn't even try to meet the attacks. She threw herself aside into a tuck-and-roll, bobbed behind a parked wagon, and took off down the street. Half a second later the wagon exploded into wood chips. Good thing the horse had been unhitched and nobody in Nyu Town could afford a car. A gas tank going sky-high would've been far worse, and cost a lot more collateral damage. Bad enough the school had suffered because these jokers were after her, without taking out half the houses around it as well.

Bolts of pain went up Cissnei's arm with each jolting footstep. She turned down a side alley, vaulted a fence via a dumpster, and proceeded to wend her way across rooftops and through yards in a complicated journey that had her disappearing from view more often than not. Super-soldiers may have the advantage in combat, but for sheer sneakiness you couldn't beat a Turk.

A woman stepped outside as she blew past. "Miss Uteru?"

"Get back inside and stay where it's safe," Cissnei barked.

"But –"

She didn't hear the rest. She used her cover well, employing long-established tricks until she reached a tiny cottage on the very edge of town. There were roses on a trellis outside the front door and the most sickening sweet name painted on a plaque: Sweetheart Homestead. The kind of place, you thought when you saw it, that smelled like fresh apple pies and had an old lady in a rocking chair by the fire.

Cissnei didn't own a rocking chair, and not even the cruellest students could call her 'old'. They whispered about mutton dressing as lamb, but that was because traditionally only middle-aged women with broken mirrors thought peroxide-blonde hair with dark roots looked attractive. Cissnei had found it good enough camouflage that she could ignore how much she hated bleaching.

Some days she wasn't sure she could live up to a place like Sweetheart Homestead. Others she wasn't sure she even wanted to. A kind of embarrassment thrummed through her whenever she crossed the threshold and remembered this was her home. It sounded a lot like Reno's derisive laughter. Sometimes she even imagined what he would say if he came to Nyu Town.

"_You live here? You're kidding, right? Talk about syrupy drivel, yo. You could go into a sugar coma in this place_."

Or words to that effect.

There was nothing syrupy about what Cissnei kept in the crawlspace under the stairs. A lot of irony, but no syrup. She tossed aside the vacuum and was halfway over a box of donated paperbacks she'd never read when the front door exploded inward.

"Where is our mother?" demanded Loz. The whatever-it-was on his arm retracted with a metallic clink. "Where is she?"

Cissnei didn't reply. She had to move to avoid being trapped, but there was a reason she'd come home. She pivoted backwards on one foot, launching herself where she needed to go. The floorboard came up easily, even one-handed.

Once she had what she wanted she tried to duck out again, but Loz was already there. Moving impossibly fast in the small space of her hallway, he intercepted her path and knocked her backwards. She took the hit into the wall rather than resist it, knowing there was no way to avoid him without being hurt even more. At least this way she could limit the dents she took – a task made easier by the fact Loz wasn't actually trying to kill her. He just wanted to maim her enough to tell him what he wanted to know.

"I don't know where your mother is," Cissnei rasped against the ache in her arm. "Or _who_."

Okay, that was a lie. Even after his death – or should that be _deaths_, since he'd proved harder to kill than a radioactive roach – the legend that was Sephiroth had grown. Most of what she'd heard was embellishment, but the odd grain of truth had slipped through – from rumour, from mess hall chatter, from reports 'found' and 'accidentally seen' on Tseng's desk (as if Mr. Information Is Power would ever leave out anything he didn't want others to read). Comparing it to what she knew, she'd been able to figure out some key things about Sephiroth, including the reason he kept saying 'Mother' while burning down Nibelheim.

Loz scowled. "Liar!"

"Careful. You'll hurt my feelings."

He launched himself at her with the abandon of a schoolyard bully. He even gave a battle-cry.

Cissnei threw the dust bag from the vacuum cleaner at him. It erupted in a grey cloud. Even silver-haired steamrollers could be brought up short by a sudden mouthful of lint.

"_Use what you have_." Veld's words came back to Cissnei, although it had been decades since he trained her. _"Don't waste time wishing for things. In a fight, a quick mind overcomes a quick body, and inventiveness will beat brute strength every time." _

Advice that had saved her life before on the mean streets of Midgar. She'd been Veld's best pupil after Tseng.

She dashed out the back door. In true fairytale style, Sweetheart Homestead bordered a deep forest, which stretched up a mountain and became almost impenetrable the further you went. Cissnei was just entering the treeline when her other two pursuers made their move.

"Peek-a-boo," said Kadaj. The spindly branch he'd landed on bowed towards her under his weight.

"We see you." Yazoo, on a neighbouring branch, aimed his gun and fired twice.

Maybe it was just meant to scare her. Maybe he was trying to wing her. Maybe not. Whatever his intention, it failed.

Yazoo flung himself aside as one of his own bullets ricocheted back at him. Kadaj was more graceful. He managed to turn his evasive manoeuvre into a perfect swan-dive. His feet hit the carpet of pine needles only a few feet away.

Cissnei brought Rekka up, staring at him between the blades of her giant shuriken. She hadn't needed to use it in years, but that parry proved she hadn't lost her touch.

"Why would an ex-Turk keep her weapon unless she had something to hide?" Kadaj asked almost conversationally. His posture, however, radiated hostility. She didn't even see him raise his sword before he was on her.

She fended him off as best she could, and that was pretty damn good under the circumstances. She didn't actually land any blows of her own, but at least he didn't make her spill her guts in a more literal sense. Rekka whirled like it was the old days and she was in the field, doing her job, being the best she could be and not thinking about the growing conflict in her soul over that very thing. Zack's death wasn't the only thing that ensured her departure from Shinra. That decision had started much earlier.

Perhaps it had begun even earlier than Veld's defection, but that had definitely been a huge influence. Cissnei had always respected and admired the former head of the Turks. He had discovered her, taken her out of the orphanage, giving her a second chance at life and reforging her into the person she was today. She took note of what he had to teach, even when he didn't realise he was teaching her.

Maybe especially then.

Veld was the consummate Turk, but he gave it all up to help his daughter. People meant more to him than the company.

Zack had been Cissnei's only real friend. He had accepted her, liked her, and not been afraid of her. Most people were at least wary of the Turks. In particular, they never knew what to make of the females. What kind of woman entered into a life like that? General consensus seemed to be 'women with no emotions or a death wish'. Cissnei fell into neither category. She hadn't exactly chosen a Turk's life of her own accord, but she hadn't exactly fought her fate either. Not until Zack taught her there was another way of looking at the world.

Not until Shinra took him from her – twice. Once when they made him vanish from Nibelheim, leaving her to skulk through their secrets trying to decipher where they'd stashed him and then how to get him out. Once more when he got himself out and she dragged her feet over following orders taking him back again. She'd broken ranks to help Veld and it had nearly gotten her killed, so she'd hesitated that second time, and that hesitation had cost Zack his life.

She hadn't ever forgiven herself for not helping him more. If she had left Shinra and gone with him, instead of just palming he and Cloud Strife off with half-truths and a motorcycle …

Gripping his sword one-handed, Kadaj landed a crafty palm-strike against her injured arm. The limb turned molten with agony. Cissnei bit her lip to stop herself screaming. She leapt to the side, parrying his assault with Rekka even though her vision smudged with winking black spots. Her head felt light, like it was suddenly full of air.

Slipping to Kadaj's off-guard side, she brought Rekka around in a low arc. Kadaj jumped to avoid it, but Cissnei raised the shuriken at the last second and caught his ankle. He was swept off his feet and landed in a crumpled heap on the floor.

Or would've, if he hadn't cartwheeled aside, leaving the way clear for Yazoo to enter the fight in his place.

Yazoo dropped down fast, trying to surprise her from above before she had time to recover. He jabbed his weapon at her collarbone. At best he would've broken it. At worst he would've cleaved off her whole arm.

Though she brought Rekka up, this time she wasn't quite quick enough. A large gash opened in her shoulder and a spray of blood hit the bottom of his hair.

_How does he fight with hair that long?_ part of Cissnei wondered. _Surely it gets in the way every time._

Her mind was wandering. Not a good sign alongside the black spots.

Birdcalls and the sound of other disturbed animals surrounded them. Cissnei heard the creatures fleeing away from Kadaj and Yazoo, and then doubling back on themselves, away from her cottage as well. There was no reprieve in that direction.

A sound-shadow had appeared – the way a body blocks light to see, so it also blocks sound to hear if you've trained long enough to notice such things. Instinctively, Cissnei fought through the pain of her injuries and threw Rekka with a powerful flick of her wrist. It buzzed towards Yazoo, but only skimmed him, wheeling back like a deadly boomerang towards its true target.

Loz cried out at the unexpected attack.

"Thought you could sneak up on me, huh?" said Cissnei.

Yazoo and Kadaj bore down on her. They struck simultaneously while she was still unarmed – one at her head, the other at her stomach. With no time to think, she dived beneath the two, rolling between her attackers. As she passed through, she struck out at the knee to her left, trying to hobble Yazoo. She made contact with something, jarring her bad arm so much that the flare of pain made it too difficult to see _what_, exactly. Flipping back to her feet, she followed through with a back kick aimed at Kadaj's kidneys.

He closed his hand around her foot and yanked her off her feet towards him. She tried to counter, but he swung her around like a throwing hammer. A very _light_ throwing hammer.

_Oh shit._

As she arced through the air, Cissnei had time to wonder when, exactly, her nice new _normal _life had devolved into a grotesque parody of her old _abnormal_ one. Then she struck the ground and stars exploded everywhere.

She had almost died so many times before, and for much better reasons. This all felt unreal. She was beaten, bloody, hurt in more places than she could count, but above all she was confused. Thoughts that might otherwise have come together easily instead scattered across her brain, falling into crannies and wedging into nooks. Together, they would've formed a pattern of connections and consequences to explain what the hell was really going on here. Apart they were just annoying, like pieces of thread on an unfinished quilt, waiting for the next patch to be added.

Sephiroth was dead. Finally and unequivocally. Cloud Strife, the grunt everyone wrote off as too weak to survive admission to the SOLDIER programme, had cut the Silver General to pieces and saved the world from his evil. There were witnesses. Proof. It could be corroborated at every turn: no trace remained. Sephiroth was dead.

D-E-A-D.

_Dead_.

Wasn't he?

Cissnei's heart beat wildly. She was having difficulty breathing. That body-slam had cracked some ribs, and possibly done even more damage to her insides. A human body hitting the ground at the right speed was just a bag of juices and crunchy bits. She tried to move, but couldn't. It wasn't even that it hurt too much: something was wrong in the transfer of thought to action. Her body had gone offline and just wasn't responding – unlike her brain.

Suddenly she was back in the chopper, on her way back to Midgar with an oilskin-wrapped body on board. She remembered strapping it down so it wouldn't slide round during the journey. She remembered the feel of waxy skin and the way the eyeballs had already begun to sink inward. She remembered flames licking at the helicopter's metalwork, the shriek like a dying animal as the fuel tanks caught and the whole thing went up like a match in a firework factory. The grim satisfaction of knowing Shinra had been denied Zack's remains was still strong. Hojo had put in a personal request for samples as soon as the news came through about the termination of Specimen Z.

_Termination. Oh, very detached. Makes it easier to ignore he was human, doesn't it? Not a person, nope, just a piece of Shinra property. Like calling him 'the specimen' or 'the target'. Makes it all sound above board. Have they ever used his actual name on any of those reports?_

Those were the thoughts that had gone Cissnei's head prior to the irresistible impulse to just jack it all in. once upon a time she never would've listened to that impulse, but that was before Zack died.

No, not died. Was _murdered_.

This battle with Loz, Yazoo and Kadaj wasn't quite murder. She was fighting back. It wasn't murder if you were fighting back, right? Or was that the confusion talking again? It clouded her mind and made everything more difficult to process. Fleetingly, she wondered whether all this was the dream, and she was actually back in that helicopter, throwing her career down the toilet for the sake of a dead man.

Dead friend. Remember that. A man, yes, not a specimen, but remember most of all that Zack was a _friend_.

"Zzzzzaaaaack …"

"No."

Kadaj was holding her up by her bad arm. His face was only inches from her own.

Cissnei realised she must have passed out. She blinked at him. His features seemed more delicate up close. Sephiroth's face had been fine-boned and smooth-skinned – more than you'd expect of a seasoned warrior. It just went to show how good he was, that he could fight so many battles and still look like a model. Nobody else was able to land a hit on him. Kadaj had the same unblemished complexion, but now she could see he was more childlike than the General. He didn't even have teenage acne yet.

"Where. Is. Mother?"

Zack was possibility. He was light and life and hope that Shinra wasn't invincible.

Zack was dead.

"Bite me," Cissnei hissed.

Kadaj's smile was sickly. Cissnei's insides froze. Maybe he'd take that more literally than she intended.

"I don't have anything of Shinra's," she said. "I don't want anything to do with them. That's why I left. Not to hide anything, just to leave."

His eyes narrowed. Something was off about the shape of his pupils. "Shinra hid her _somewhere_. You were a Turk. That's practically synonymous with 'liar'."

"I _was_ a Turk. Past tense."

"Says you." He squeezed her arm. Pain brought a wave of nausea. "Amazing what the right kind of _pressure_ can do to motivate a person."

He had put away his sword, and raised his empty hand above her. The fingers were shaped into a point. Cissnei all but passed out again. Kadaj's fingers, like barbs, pinpointed specific places on her body, rendering her defenceless and completely immobile. She remembered long-ago sparring sessions with other Turks who also knew how to manipulate nerve centres. The memory made her eyes widen. She was at Kadaj's mercy.

"I'd paralyse your mouth, too," he said silkily, "but that'd defeat the point." He twisted his fingertips like a corkscrew. A single jab made a burning sensation spread through Cissnei's body and down her arms and legs. "Now, tell me, where have you put our mother?"

Cissnei resisted the urge to scream. "Nowhere," she wheezed.

Kadaj twisted again.

Pain unlike anything she'd ever known rocked through her. She went past the need to scream and opened her mouth in a silent cry until he stopped. "I don't … have her …" Crap, that sounded like sobbing. Her words trailed away as he tried to force out the answer he wanted. "I d-don't … fuh-fuck orf … dun' have … ngh …"

Finally Kadaj bunched his fingers and pressed the tips against her sweater. "One final strike to your heart will kill you. And it won't be quick or painless."

Though she cursed her own weakness, Cissnei whimpered. She was hollowed-out with agony. She had little left to give in this battle of wills. Torture had a way of eroding willpower faster than anything else; and it wasn't like she was trying to _protect_ Shinra. She just didn't have the information these three psychos wanted, and they couldn't believe – or accept – that fact.

"I d-don't …" she got out.

"You don't mean anything to us," Kadaj said. "Shinra's tool. You Turks worked to defeat our brother."

She was already gone by the time they worked with AVALANCHE to defeat Sephiroth, but Cissnei didn't have the breath left to say that. She sagged in Kadaj's grasp, aware how ironic this was. People used to be afraid of her. She used to be the one doing the torturing for information if the company demanded it. That was one of the reasons why Zack's acceptance meant so much to her. He had to know about the things Turks did –the things _she_ did behind closed doors – but he never brought them up, and he never judged her. It wasn't that he didn't care, either; it was that he saw who she was outside that, beyond the job that had defined every other aspect of her existence.

Around Zack, Cissnei could be a person, not just a Turk.

And now she was going to die as a routed Turk, not a person.

Just like him, dying as Specimen Z, not Zack Fair.

_Thunk._

"G-Get away from her."

_What? _

Cissnei's eyes snapped open. She couldn't tip her head back to look, but she knew that voice.

_No. _

"L-Leave her alone," it trembled.

"Should I shoot him?" Yazoo asked somewhere above her.

_No!_

Kadaj raised his head, distracted from his task. He'd been so absorbed in torturing her he hadn't even noticed the speaker's approach. Or maybe he simply didn't care.

"Get away, Billy …" Cissnei mustered every scrap of strength she had left. "Dun' … come 'ny … closrrrr …"

"I won't let you hurt her anymore," Billy said, his voice strengthening as hers grew weaker.

"How irritating," Yazoo muttered.

"I could take care of him," Loz offered. "Uh, I mean them."

_Them?_

"You boys leave our Miss Uteru alone." Cissnei recognised the voice of the headmaster. "Whatever grievance you may have with her, this is going too far."

"Back off, old man," Kadaj said. "If you know what's good for you."

"Now, son –"

"I'm not your son." For the first time, Cissnei heard anger in Kadaj's voice.

"You're somebody's son, and I reckon they'd be mighty disappointed to see you torturing that poor girl." Yep, that was the headmaster: king of understatement. Only he could use the words 'disappointed' and 'torturing' in the same sentence and not be taking the piss.

"You should be ashamed!" cried a third voice, and Cissnei was shocked to recognise one of the shopkeepers from town – the woman who'd come outside as she was trying to lead Kadaj, Loz and Yazoo away from the school. She'd barely spoken here words to the woman outside placing grocery orders, but here she was, leaping to Cissnei's defence against Tweedle-Dumb, Tweedle-Dumber and Tweedle-Dumbest. Was this woman suicidal or just plain stupid? There was no reason for her to get involved. "Attacking a good girl like Miss Uteru. It's disgraceful."

"Disgraceful?" Yazoo repeated the word like he couldn't believe it.

"We just want our mother," Loz replied. "That's all."

"So to get her you're going to deprive these children of theirs?"

Kadaj's grip on Cissnei tightened.

"You think you can just waltz in here, saying and doing whatever you want, destroying property and hurting people just because it suits you?" the shopkeeper went on. "Nyu Town was _made_ because of people like you. We all gathered here because super-powered idiots destroyed our homes, or took our loved-ones. We had to remake our entire lives from the ground up. This is a town of victims, and now you want to make one more? Well I say – take this!"

_Thunk_.

"Kadaj," said Loz, "they're throwing stones at us."

"I can see that, Loz."

_Thunk. Thunk. _

"That orphanage can't afford to replace that wall you knocked down!"

"Orphanage?" Loz echoed. "I thought that was a school."

"It's both, if you'd bothered to check before you started shooting magic bullets at it."

"My bullets aren't magic," said Yazoo.

"Neither are these rocks, but I'm going to keep throwing them anyway until you leave Miss Uteru alone."

"She's not who you think she is," Kadaj said loudly.

"You think we care who she was in the past? We all have pasts. The whole world has a past. It's who you are _now_ that matters. Miss Uteru has done more for those children than you could ever imagine. She's the reason most of them chose to survive instead of giving up on life. You are _not_ taking her away from them when they already lost their families once."

Cissnei tried to shake her head, but her neck was still not responding properly. It flopped like a ball-bearing on a wet noodle. "Idiots," she croaked. "Run the hell _away_."

Kadaj looked down at her. "Turk," he said without inflection. Then he released her. She sprawled onto her back, getting an eyeful of sky and not much else.

"Kadaj?" she heard Loz say, all possible questions in the name.

"We're leaving."

"But what about –?"

"She doesn't have anything we want."

"How can you be sure –?"

"We're _leaving_," Kadaj snapped, all possible answers in his tone.

Loz fell silent. Yazoo, on the other hand, sniffed and murmured, "So where to now?"

Cissnei never heard Kadaj's reply. The three brothers launched themselves into the trees of the forest and bounded away. The shaking of branches could have been mistaken for squirrels.

Really _big_ squirrels.

Hands touched Cissnei. She let out a moan and they pulled back sharply.

"We need to get you to a doctor," said the headmaster.

"Should've … run 'way …" she slurred. The black spots were back and seemed intent on taking over _all_ her vision this time. "Should've lef' me …"

"That's enough of that silliness," snapped the shopkeeper. Cissnei realised with a pang of shame that she didn't actually know the woman's name.

"… Could've been hurt … danj'rous …"

"We look after our own, you silly girl. What kind of friends would we be if we let you face those three _imbeciles_ alone?"

Friends? They were her _friends_?

"Of course we're your friends. You must be concussed. Your questions are getting sillier and sillier. Billy, hurry and fetch the doctor. Fetch that healer from her house on the other side of town as well. Time for her to prove her magic is as good as modern medicine. Tell them it's an emergency. Miss Uteru has been hurt. That'll light a fire under them, I'd wager."

Cissnei was half-convinced she was hallucinating. Surely there was some mistake here.

"Hush, now," said the headmaster. "Rest. You've been through quite the ordeal."

"M-Miss Uteru?"

Cissnei pried her eyes opened again, only then realised they'd slid closed. "Bill…" Her tongue lodged against the roof of her mouth. Nope, couldn't even able get out that simple word now.

"Please be okay, Miss," Billy said in a rush, as if his nerve would fail him if he didn't say the words as quickly as possible. "I … we … you can't leave us. We need … that is, all of us at the … you're like our … um … just please be okay. Okay? Um … yeah. Okay." His footsteps faded quickly as he hurried off.

Well wasn't this an unexpected turn of events?

Cissnei wiggled her tongue off her palette. "… Sorry …"

"Didn't we already tell you to hush?" said the shopkeeper.

She blinked. The woman had a round face, like a pat of butter left too long in the sun, and hair of a determined ginger. She looked stern and unapproachable, but the naked concern in her eyes was strangely comforting. Had anyone ever looked at Cissnei like that before? Turks cared about their own, but they didn't _care_ about their own; not the way other people understood the word. Shinra was good at shaving off all the extraneous parts of humanity an efficient worker didn't need.

No wonder Zack ended up on the wrong side of them.

She wasn't stupid. She knew everything she'd done since leaving Shinra had been at least partially to ease her conscience over her past. Yet at the same time, she had come to love Nyu Town. It had come to men more to her than just a way of relieving her own guilt over … well, everything, really. Her work as a Turk. Failing Zack. Not telling Veld to get lost right at the beginning. All of it. This place end these people _mattered_ to her – the halt and the lame, the unwanted, the leftovers of past wars and crises, whom nobody ever thought about after the fact. Nyu Town was where people ended up when the world no longer had a place they fit comfortably into because someone had blown it up during a fight. It had seemed the perfect way to buy herself some peace of mind.

When did the place stop being that and start being a home?

Cissnei fought to cling to consciousness, but her body rebelled. It knew it needed rest, and she had to admit, feeling no pain for a while would be nice.

As she faded out, however, she was aware of a sound-shadow leaning over her, altering the way she could hear the distressed birds left in the brothers' wake. She thought it was Billy, though it was far too soon for him to have run into town and back already. Or maybe it was someone else who's witnessed the incident at the school and had finally plucked up the courage to investigate now the danger was over.

Then she heard a chuckle. It was there and yet it wasn't. She knew she'd heard it, but at the same time it seemed to arrive inside her head fully formed, and not via her ears. She knew that chuckle. It had replayed itself in her dreams more times than she could count. Always she'd woken from those dreams aching with grief, because she knew she'd never really hear it again.

"_You thought I was the only friend you'd ever make_?" asked the voice that wasn't a voice. _"__**I**__ thought you were smarter than that."_

She felt the lump in her throat despite Kadaj's fading paralysis, and managed to force a few words past her lips. They were greeted with surprise.

"My name?" echoed the shopkeeper. "Why, it's Wendy."

"And my first name is Keller," said the headmaster. "But you need your rest. We can talk about whatever you want later, but for now you need to keep your strength for yourself. You already expended enough trying to keep everyone else safe today."

"_I wonder what Tseng would have to say about you saving civilians like that. Probably something po-faced. I only ever saw him smile once, and it was the creepiest thing ever. I'm talking Grade A Heebie-Jeebies. Oh, and by the way; Cissnei? If you see a light, stay the hell away from it, okay?"_

Cissnei closed her eyes and smiled, looking almost less than human, but feeling more human than she had in years.

* * *

**Notes, Side-Flings and Bits of Info You Didn't Even Know You Wanted to Know**

* * *

"_M-Miss Uteru?" quavered a voice._

-- A play on the Japanese word 'misuteru', meaning 'to abandon, to fail, or to desert'.

"_My name?" echoed the shopkeeper. "Why, it's Wendy."_

-- 'Wendy' is an English name meaning 'friend' (www. thinkbabynames. com/meaning/0/Wendy).

"_And my first name is Keller," said the headmaster._

-- 'Keller' is a Gaelic name meaning 'dear friend' (www. thinkbabynames. com/meaning/1/Keller).


End file.
